


How Far Can I Go

by wizardfiend



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: dont worry about it, im in hell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:08:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24048703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizardfiend/pseuds/wizardfiend
Summary: Its not gonna be romance because fuck you I've had enough. my life is in shambles and I wanna know how many chapters i can write of this in complete sincerity before either god or the government takes me out.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> its may 6th, 2020, quarantine has emptied the streets and i am depressed. sonic is my shining light at the end of the tunnel, i think it may be a train. yeehaw cowboy.

The vast emptiness of space. Though it is clouded with stars and galaxies, it is, on the whole, so empty. It is devoid of that which makes life feel so cluttered, for better and for worse. Standing at the precipice of being and unbeing, one is faced with a choice: step away and turn your back on this forever, or step forward and leave your life behind.

Who better to be contemplating on the edge of some space needle than Shadow the Hedgehog. Face to the wind, quills bristling in the harsh cold of night. He'd been through a lot, lost a dear friend in a great tragedy, but he'd also been on great adventures with Sonic and met new friends. Now it seemed that his adventures were at a standstill. What did he really want out of life? Now that everything was finally okay, he felt... useless. There were no more enemies to fight. No great catastrophes to fix. Was this it? The end of his life as he knew it? Not quite death but a form of it, a sloughing off of all that defined him. Catharsis, but not _his_ catharsis, the universe was vomiting him out because it didn't need him anymore.

The glittering stars were deaf to his grief. "Hello Shadow," the universe seemed to say to him. "I'm not here right now, but call back some other time." He shuffled inside and curled into bed. _Better to be ignored and warm,_ he thought. Maybe this would all go away in the morning. Maybe he would wake up and not feel the emptiness inside him threaten to crush him. Maybe he wouldn't feel the cold gaze of the stars on his back as he slept. In the morning. It'd all be better in the morning.... 

Had he stood on that ledge a little longer, he would've seen a star twinkle a little brighter, and then not at all.


	2. Picnics and Falling Stars

The morning comes streaking across the sky like fire licking at the drapes of Earth. Light hits the ground as if shot from arrows, finding their way into the eyes of sleeping citizens. Shadow the hedgehog, expert at avoiding the sun, wore an eye mask to bed. He didn't like his sleep to be interrupted, but the warmth of the sun and the soft beeping of his phone were vying for his attention. After nearly half an hour of sleepily arguing with himself over whether or not he should go back to sleep and ignore it, he succumbed to the external stimuli desperate to make him get out of bed. 

Shadow pulled off his eye mask and squinted against the light, a message from Amy popping up on his screen. 

"hey we're going on a picnic we want you to come" 

_Right now? at... Okay, 12:45._ Well, at least he'd gotten up earlier than yesterday. Amy made a point to text him pretty often, making sure he was okay, asking if he wanted to hang out. So did Rouge, but she was busy with college nowadays. He wasn't even sad about it, somehow his existential depression took a complete backseat to Loving His Friends. He was proud of her. He'd been staring at the message thinking of what to say for five minutes. 

"like right now?" Great job. Perfect text. 10/10. 

"yeah come 2 the park i brought coffee beans i know you just woke up"

Shadow skated to the park where he and his friends liked to hang out. There was a big tree away from where people played sports, where his friends had set up a blanket for a picnic. The breeze tousled the grass like an old friend, where the sun was hot the gentle whisps of air were cool. It was perfect. It had been such a long time since he had actually been _out._ He'd been outside, sure. But it felt like it had been forever since he'd meant to be somewhere. Today he wasn't some lost, shipwrecked hedgehog at the mercy of the cruel ocean of life, today he was.. Just Shadow. Hanging out with his friends. 

"Shadoooooow you made it!" Amy jumped up and waved vigorously, obviously excited to see him. It made him smile. 

He scoffed. "What, like I'm gonna let you take advantage of a beautiful day like this without me?" Hiding his smile, but not so well. 

"Of course not, we just expected you to show up as a bat or something." Tails snickered. 

"Tch! And show my true form to all these normies? You of all people show know better, Tails.." He posed dramatically with his hand over his eye. "I can't risk catching the attention of vampire hunters." 

They managed to keep their composure for maybe seven seconds, before devolving into giggling messes. Shadow propped his board against the tree and sat down at the blanket.

"Here's your beans you weird little bean boy. I texted Sonic and Knuckles but they're worse than you are at getting up at a reasonable time!" 

Shadow crunched on his coffee beans. "What? Goody two-shoes Sonic The Hedgehog? Knuckles.. Maybe. I could see that. But what, did Sonic break a leg or something?" 

"They've been working really hard on a super secret project together, getting up at _dawn_." Tails was fiddling with a little square-shaped contraption. 

" _Dawn??_ " 

Amy and Tails nodded, unpacking things from the basket. Lots of really good sandwiches and fresh fruits, some biscuits and jam, cookies, muffins, and... Could it be?? Yogurt covered craisins? Okay yeah there's granola too but the yogurt covered craisins are whats important. Shadow obviously helped, setting out cups and plates and napkins. Tails had brought a jug of lemonade, which everybody was pretty excited about. Shadow felt tempted to apologize for not bringing anything, he could feel it bubbling up inside him like some horrible baking soda volcano of self-deprecation. 

"Um. Sorry I didnt bring anything." 

"You brought yourself. That's good enough." 

Shadow's self-doubt learned a valuable lesson that day, that Amy is stronger than like, most things, concepts included.

It didn't take long for Sonic and Knuckles to show up, with Amy shuffling her cards in the interim. Shadow made himself busy by picking out the yogurt covered craisins out of the granola, much to Tails' chagrin. They both looked tired, like they'd been working all day. 

"Did you guys see the falling stars last night?" Sonic asked, plopping down on the blanket. 

"Nope. Went to sleep at a reasonable hour, unlike.. Well all of you." Amy sighed. 

Tails shook his head, with mouthful of sandwich. Shadow concentrated hard, tried to remember the night sky. It was like trying to remember a dream. The twinkling, glittering sky always looked the same, somehow always different but always the same. He shook his head, too, puzzled. 

"I was up pretty late and didn't see anything." 

"Really? It was like, prime Shadow hours. Anyways, yeah, a whole star fell. It looked like it touched down on Earth." 

"Wouldn't that make it a meteorite?" Tails asked in between bites of sandwich. 

"I don't know, but it looked pretty close and didnt explode or anything." 

"Thats... Crazy." 

They were quiet but you could tell what they were thinking. They all exchanged look and didn't say a word. No one wanted to think too loudly incase someone else might hear. The hope was too much. It felt like looking up at a bright light. But it was fragile, if you could stand to look at it there was a chance it couldn't stand to be looked at, and would shatter under your gaze. 

Shadow was stealthily trying to eat yogurt covered craisins, but its like, really hard to eat a yogurt covered craisin without people noticing, especially in the held-breath moment they were all sharing. 

"Shadow! Oh my god you little bean boy you can't eat all the yogurt covered craisins!" 

"Don't bring them if you don't want me to eat them!!"


	3. Handle it

They went home when the sun began to set and the ocean threatened to swallow the light. The air was cool, the breeze had gone and hid somewhere out of the way, leaving them to walk home in companionable energy. They talked and laughed until they had to split away, pausing to admire the solemnity of their crossroads. They were close, like family, yet they decided to live and grow seperately, and times like these made them question whether or not that was the right choice. Shadow returned to the top of his space needle, Amy to her apartment in the city, Tails to the rural countryside, and.. Sonic and Knuckles to their mysterious workspace. Sonic and Knuckles didn't live together, but they spent the most time together, since they decided to work on this strange project from dawn to dusk... 

The stars twinkled, and the sky-lit eyes that kept their ever-present watch on the world for once were closed. Had anyone been watching, they would've seen yet another star glow just a little brighter, and then not at all. 

Amy closed the door to her appartment and let out a deep breath. It was hard to be content when exactly what you wanted was just out of reach. They'd saved the world countless times, and now it was _over_. She didn't care about that, she was glad it was over. But she cared about her friends, who seemed to be so... devastated. They don't know what they want out of life or how to deal with this sudden void that after all these years would be left.. Empty. And she didn't know how to help them, how to make them feel better. She knew this was something they'd have to do on their own--and of course she'd be there for them--but she couldn't just.. brute force through the problem. Just say 'look at how great our lives are! you can do anything you want now!' and it all be okay. 

She decided that tonight she would deep-clean the apartment and not think about it. Maybe break a plate or two. Not thinking about it was the important part. 

She finished deep-cleaning for hours straight at about 3am, or what her friends called 'peak Shadow hours' because it was one of the few times you could actually catch him awake. _I'll text him. He's good at saying what other people feel._

"have you felt like bad since we stopped" 

not even seconds later came Shadow's reply.

"oh you mean the yawning emptiness that threatens to swallow me whole every hour of every day? yeah you could say that" 

"god youre so edgy" 

"yeah maybe but why do you ask" 

"i just spent like 7 hours deep cleaning my apartment i dont think im handling this as well as i thought" 

"it took you this long to notice?" 

"im gonna kick your ass"


	4. Sweet dreams

With the death of the sun comes the birth of the moon, vaulting high into the inky blackness that threatened to consume the city. The citizens were blanketed in the cover of sleep, or perhaps exhaustion. Shadow and Amy were huddled together in her apartment, wrapped in blankets eating popcorn talking about their feelings, realizing maybe drifting apart wasn't what they wanted after all. They stayed up until the sun reached through the window and wrapped them up in a web of sleep. 

But perhaps more interesting were the dreams of those who slept under this most curious of skies, with its twinkling, disappearing stars. The dreams that came easily, and those that haunted and lurked in the shadows. Many citizens, oddly enough, did not dream. And those who did found themselves looking forever upwards as the stars winked out one by one. 

Miles "Tails" Prower had been asleep since he got home. He walked through the door and into his hangar bed and conked out like he'd been dropped. Normally this time of night he'd be up on the roof with his huge, mechanical telescope that tracked the movements of the night sky, especially after Sonic mentioned that falling star. But tonight he slept softly in his bed, unbothered by the world outside. 

It's unfortunate that the world did not return the sentiment. The air was still, the trees didn't dare move, the house didn't settle, his gadgets and gizmos briefly paused in their whirring and electrical buzzing. Tails fell into the inky blackness that, for once, did not just threaten and loom; it dipped its tentative hand into the world and tested its strength. The open maw of God stretched infinitely outwards, and swallowed the stars. All that was left was emptiness.. Void. You didn't notice how loud the universe was until it went silent. 

Here Tails stood at the precipice of being and unbeing, and he was faced with a question: Either turn your back on this, or leave the world you know behind.


	5. Homecoming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been like a month but i think about this constantly so *mario voice* HERE WE GO

Sometime around midday Shadow recieved a text. His phone rumbled in the special beat he'd set for Rouge, and he rocketed awake and fumbled with his phone. Her message beamed up at him from his screen: 

"coming home for break also have u seen the news??? crazy dreams" 

He rubbed his eyes and tried to type quietly. 

"i love you so much but everything you send me is indecipherable. im at amys we had a breakdown together see you at home" 

"did u just get up??" 

"maybe" 

">:("

Shadow scrambled to get home, leaving a note for Amy when she woke up, and a text. He skated like the wind, sleep blasting from his body like dust from an old blanket. He ran up the stairs to his space needle apartment, fumbled with the key, unlocked the door, and ran full-body into Rouge. He hadn't seen her in what felt like forever--sure it'd technically only been a month, but when you're an edgehog a month is like three years. Rouge just managed to catch him and hold him up, nearly toppling over in the process. He flung his arms around her neck and she held him like a little kid again. 

"Geez, I didn't know you missed me that much. The university's only an hour away, Shadow!"

"Yeah maybe but it's not as good as when you're home." 

"You're just lucky I'm a beefcake and can actually hold you up like this."

"All I eat is coffee beans and sandwiches! I weigh like five pounds!"

"Alright fine you darkmatter edgehog, get off of me!" 

With a hearty WHUMPH! Shadow fell onto the floor. And somewhere, in a warehouse across the city, Sonic and Knuckles were working steadily on their top secret project.


	6. Starlight

The stars are not, in fact, just giant gas balls very far away, which shine down on earth as tiny pinpricks of light. They are the eyes of the universe gazing ever inward to itself, kind of like eyeshine in photos of wild animals. Many twinkle, softly, and if you look closely you can just begin to make out their color--blue stars are hotter than red stars! White stars are brighter, hotter, smaller, and younger, whereas big red stars are colder and on their way out. When they disappear they explode, they die, and their essence becomes new stars. But perhaps, in a world less like our own, and a little more cruel, or perhaps just older and wiser, the stars did not simply reach the end of their life cycle and explode and die and become new stars, but were winked out like a candle being extinguished by a practiced hand. A world where the stars vanished one by one, then by the handful, then by the bucketful, then in droves and mouthfuls of a huge, angry god, swallowing up the kind gaze that looks ever onward, in spite or out of some primitive hunger--we'll never know. Thank god we don't live in a world like that. 

And thank god you aren't Tails "Miles" Prower right now, who does live in a world like that, and was forced to witness this alone. Standing by himself, staring into the maw of the angry, hungry god which threatened to swallow him up; the billions of stars writhing and glowing in its stomach. Spite does not drive an animal, they simply don't have the mental capacity for it. But hunger, oh hunger drives an animal; want, need, obsession, drives an animal. But it is so hard not to be angry at an animal for following its impulses. It can't help it, surely it's wrong to be angry; but anger is an animal too, it only knows want. It cannot be told 'well, it's just an animal!' because it will snap back and say 'I am an animal too! Let me kill it! It hurt me, let me kill it!'

Tails awoke, finding himself in his bed staring up at the ceiling and not in the cold void of space. He felt empty, unrested, and scared. He had seen something not meant for mortal eyes, had he snuck in on this heinous act? Or had he been shown it purposefully, by some uncaring force who knew he was helpless. 

Did it matter?


End file.
